Posted: December 4th, 2009 | Author: The Morodo Team | Filed under: blog | No Comments »
At first glance, Golden Gekko’s new online-make-your-own-app service, Tino, seems like quite a natty idea, enabling anyone with a browser and a brain to knock up a mobile application in minutes. A closer look at the output of Tino’s app engine reveals that what you can create is about as much an app as anything Khalid Shaikh made for the iPhone. A package of content: yes. An app: no.
Of course, Tino’s model relies on the punter going back to make ‘ten apps a year.’ Why should I have to do that? For the same money I can hire a developer (like Morodo) to make one app that can be updated with new content OTA as and when I want. For that kind of money, why build an app at all? It would be faster and cheaper to build a website that configures for mobile browsers. And yes, Morodo can do that for you too.
Over at m-strat.org, Jose has written a great piece on small business mobile strategy that demonstrates, by example, the need for SMEs to embrace the mobile web. Something more useful then Tino might be a desktop or online tool that helped people create and manage simple mobile websites?
Posted: December 2nd, 2009 | Author: The Morodo Team | Filed under: blog | No Comments »
Last week, in an unguarded moment, a Nokia middle-management marketeer let slip that by 2012 the Symbian S60 OS is to be phased out and replaced by the all-singing, all-dancing, all- Linux Maemo. As the news spread, a legion of mobile bloggers gathered to gloat over the still- twitching corpse of S60 like distant relatives flocking to the funeral of a renowned patriarch.
Carlo Longino of MobHappy weighed in with a none too touching eulogy that, atypically, quoted from Mike Rowehel’s infamously pro-iPhone anti-Nokia rant. Carlo states that the argument of scale is a nonsense, that the company shipping the most devices does not demand the greatest attention of the Developer Community. In his view (and Mike’s) we should all be working with the ‘best’ platform available.
Well, Carlo, you’re right and you’re wrong. One hundred thousand plus iPhone apps in iTunes and over a billion downloads does indeed make a strong case for some quick bucks and PR puff. I don’t deny that the Morodo team sees the iPhone app as an essential piece of the jigsaw (as I write our own MO-Call app for the Apple wunderphone is In Review) but it is just a piece.
However we view the iPhone, if we truly want to reach the world, what we don’t do is write off an OS simply because the key manufacturer’s online distribution portal isn’t what we want it to be, or the mobile doesn’t support gosh-awesome graphics. Why? Because that’s not what the whole world wants from a phone.
In the back street phone markets of New Delhi Nokia phones, sold wholesale, are known as ‘dollar.’ It’s a trusted and aspirational brand. We might all aspire to the iPhone but the reality is we’ll use a refurbished 5110 if it’s what we can afford. I don’t want to come over all evangelical but Nokia Ovi Life Services really is bringing email and the web to the Third World and S40 sure ain’t dead yet.
Ask yourself: do Apple employ anyone to do the work of Jan Chipchase’s unit at Nokia? No, they don’t. Nor will they. Ever. Apple is First World only. To everyone out there making awesome apps for the iPhone, please, go ahead, blaze a trail, coin it in on your games, but don’t write-off those of us bringing useful devices and services to the next four billion souls who can’t afford a smartphone.
Posted: December 1st, 2009 | Author: The Morodo Team | Filed under: blog | No Comments »
The irrepressible predictors of future trends at Gartner have published their mobile app picks for 2012. There is a lot to take issue with in Gartner’s top ten but what’s the point? These reports are written for their audience: the type of Mobile Network Operator (MNO) executives whose secretaries print off their emails for them to read every morning. Anyway, here’s the list:
Money Transfer- Location-Based Services
- Mobile Search
- Mobile Browsing
- Mobile Health Monitoring
- Mobile Payment
- Near Field Communication Services
- Mobile Advertising
- Mobile Instant Messaging
- Mobile Music
Over on msearchgroove, one of Peggy-Ann’s people has pointed out that these apps are none too creative, reflecting industry hype (really? where’s mobile TV then?); I would argue that the single most important mobile app is missing: voice. That’s something those MNO executives definitely don’t want to read about, let alone pay to read about.
In all the furore over apps, apps stores, Apple and Android, we seem to have lost sight of the fact that Voice is an app and no longer the exclusive preserve of the MNO. The team at Morodo turned it up to eleven with the app that puts you back in control of your mobile: MO-Call.
